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Friday, 27 December 2013

Eldar vs Orks 1500: Stompa strike

Big Mek Zaapcrackle
has been a thorn in the side of the Eldar of Dem-Kirath for far too long, the
time to destroy the menace is now. However the Big Mek is riding in his pride
and joy, the Stompa Morkatron, so it’s time to bring in the heavy artillery, an
Eldar Lynx. The game is a 1500 point game of Ultimate Line breaker (escalation
mission), with dawn of war deployment.

The Armies

Eldar

1499

I use my Lynx force,
to try it out and see what a D weapon can do

Farseer – 120 (Warlord: prefared enemy:
LOW) w/ bikes

Jetbike, singing spear, [Forewarning,
misfortune, prescience]

3 Jet bikes – 61

Shuriken cannon

3 Jet bikes – 61

Shuriken cannon

10 Guardians – 110

Bright lance

Wave serpent – 135

Holo field, scatter laser

6 Dire avengers - 78

Wave serpent – 135

Holo field, scatter laser

7 warp spiders – 133

6 swooping hawks - 96

Fire Prism – 140

Holo field

Lynx – 430

Pulsar, scatter laser

Orks 1500

Big Mek (Warlord:
twin-linked shots vs lords of war) In Stompa

Kustom force field

Big Mek w/ grots

Shock-attack gun

Deff dread

4x dreadnaught close
combat weapons

Deff dread

2x rokit launcher

15 gretchin

3 Killa Kans

3x big shootas

3 Killa Kans

3x Grotzooka

Stompa

I was surprised by a
dread list as I have never faced such an Ork list before, and it has a Stompa
as well just to make things even harder. If my lynx dies I am in trouble as I
have no real way of destroying the stompa, so I have to be careful and pray he doesn’t
kill him.

The mission

As we both have a
lord of war we decided to give the escalation missions a go to see how they
played out and we rolled up Ultimate Linebreaker (get 1 vp for each unit in the
enemy deployment zone at and of the game, and lords get 2 vp at the end of each
turn they are line breaking). This mission uses dawn of war deployment. The
orks win the roll for first turn and set up first.

The stompa goes in
the middle, flanked by a unit of kans and the rokkit dread. In the very centre
the grots and shock attack gun hide in the woods. To the left of the woods the
kans with grotzookas are placed and on his far left the combat dread.

To counter this I
place the fire prim in the centre behind the large tree, the guardian wave
serpent to the left of it and the lynx hides behind some trees (but it’s not
really hidden). The dire avenger wave serpent goes in the opening to the left
of the lynx and the farseer joins a bike unit and hides behind some woods, but
is within 12 inches of the lynx so I can cast forewarning on it turn 1. I keep
the swooping hawks and warp spiders in reserve, both deep striking in and the
bikes in reserve as well.

Night fight: turn 1

Steal the initiative:
No

The Battle

Ork turn 1

Aiming straight for
the Lynx the stompa moves forwards followed by the kan squad on its right and
the rokkit dread on its right. The kan unit on the left manage to get into
force field range gaining a 5+ cover save and the combat dread moves forwards alone.

Unloading all of its
Dakka the stompa shoots its deff kannon at the lynx, it hits, gets though its
holo field and penetrates it, but thanks to night fight it has a 5+ cover save
and passes it. The Supa-Gatler then starts shooting and all 3 turns of shooting
are aimed at the lynx, the first attempt mainly hits the holo field and does
nothing, the second misses and the 3rd gets a single glancing hit. I
was very surprised how well that survived considering it must have been shot at
by over 20 shots! The big shootas target the jet bikes and kill 2 of the
bikers, but the unit holds. 2 out of the 3 supa rokkits are shot at the Lynx as
well, but 1 scatter wide and the other gets a penetrating hit but shakes it (4
hull points left). Next the shock-attack gun targets the wave serpent and hits
but its strength isn’t high enough to penetrate the front armour of the tank.
The missile dread shoots at the wave serpent as well glancing it while the rest
of the army runs.

Eldar turn 1

Hoping to keep the
lynx alive for longer, the farseer casts forewarning on it, granting it a 4+
invulnerable save. Moving to the right the fire prism aims at the stompa hoping
to take off a hull point or two. Both wave serpents move to target the
deffdread on the left while the bikes move up the left hand side of the table.

The Mek gets angry

Scatter laser from
the lynx hits the stompa twin linking its pulsar but it can’t damage it. I
place the large blast template so it hits the stompa and the deffdread next to
it, both blasts hit thanks to twin-linked. Rolling on the D chart from the
deffdread first, it explodes, rather expectedly. Now onto the stompa, I roll a
4 (D3+1 hull points) and a 6 (D6+6 hull points). Wow that's a lot of damage,
and I manage to strip off exactly 12 hull points, it explodes but does no
damage and somehow the Big Mek survives! With a new target the fire prism fires
a focused beam at the mek and hits but fails to wound him (one tough ork). Both
wave serpents shoot their scatter laser and serpent shield in order to take
down the combat dread, but eventually it gets wrecked. I boost the bikes
forwards.

Ork turn 2

Both units of kans
move towards my lines and the big mek moves to grant one of them a cover save.

Shooting phase and
both kans run forwards while the shock-attack gun targets the fire prism but fails
to penetrate its armour.

Eldar turn 2

From reserve all of
my units arrive, the hawks on the right in his deployment zone, they drop the
template on the grots and kill 5. The warp spiders between the big mek and the
kans but it scatter a little, but not much. Finally the bikes come in on the
right hand side. One wave serpent mvoes ontop of the base on the right while
the other faces the kans.

Lasers from the hawks
hit the grots and manage to kill 3. The pulsar from the lynx hits the kans with
both templates and destroys all 3. With no kans left the warp spiders shoot at
the big mek but again he takes no wounds! To ignore his cover save I use the
wave serpents to target him and the serpent shield manages to deal enough
wounds to kill him. The bikes boost forwards.

Ork turn 3

The remaining kan
unit moves towards the warp spiders.

Shock attack gun
targets the swooping hawks, and rolls a 12 for strength, everything hit is
removed from the table. He rolls to hit and it locks on, the whole unit is
removed. Big shootas from the kans kills 2 warp spiders and the spiders run for
it.

Assault and the kans
make it into the warp spiders who rally, just to get cut down. The kans kill
them all and move towards the prism.

Eldar turn 3

Moving away from the
kans, the fire prism back off to the right while the lynx makes sure it can see
the walkers. Both wave serpents’ move to see the gretchin as do the bikes.

Pulsar shots again
prove dangerous, only a single blast hits but still it explodes 2 of the kans.
In a desperate attempt to survive the fire prism uses its focused beam on the
remaining kan but misses. The shots from the wave serpents and bikes kill off
the grots but leave the shock attack gun in place.

Ork turn 4

Buzz saw ready the
kan moves with in licking distance of the fire prism and the big mek turns on
the spot to see the farseer.

Hoping to take out
the farseer before he dies, the big mek shoots at him and hits, but the
strength of the shot was only 4, and it fails to wound him.

Assault and the kan
charges into the fire prism and rips it a new one, it explodes.

Eldar turn 4

The lynx kills the
kan and the rest of my army kills the big mek and herder.. I table the orks.

Eldar Victory.

Post-Battle

That game went very
quickly due to the lynx’s D weapon, no doubt about it. It destroyed a stompa in
a single turn without help from anything... that just screams power. It is over
powered? Probably, but it was due to rolling a 6, if I hadn’t the stompa would
have been alive another turn and probably charged into the lynx destroying it. Is
it fair? No, a 400 point model shouldn’t be able to kill a 700 point model in a
single turn of shooting, that much is obvious. But we both knew what we were
getting into. After the game we played another with the same lists apart from
one change, I swapped the pulsar for a sonic lance (more on that later). When
you think about it, I don’t see the problem with a D weapon being that it in
itself is too powerful, it’s that it has such a varied damage result. If it did
a set amount regardless, I feel it would be easier to regulate. If all of the
results were D3 + 1 hull points that would be great. I believe it would easily destroy
most normal tanks and be a lot fairer against super heavies so you can’t 1 shot
a model that is over 500 points. But that's just my opinion.

This game I can’t
really say I learnt anything as no real tactics were used; I just rolled some
dice and won because I got lucky. My opponent did take it in his stride and the
game was funny, just watching his orks desperately try to kill what he could before
it got a big D in its face.

Second Game

Second Game: Morkatron seeks revenge

I didn’t do a battle
report for the second game as I just wanted to play, I didn’t want to slow it
down as doing a battle report inevitably does. However by removing the D weapon
the course of the game changed massively.

We rolled on the
escalation missions again and got a different one, I don’t remember the name
but there were 4 objectives which could be destroyed (AV 15) and granted armour
bane to the unit that controlled it. This game was so much better than the
first game because by giving anything armour bane it balanced the game massively.
MY swooping hawks came in form reserve and took an objective behind the stompa.
This allowed their lasblasters (strength 3) be in with a chance of doing damage
to its rear armour (AV 12). Just little things like that really helped and it
was a much more enjoyable game.

Strangely enough the
sonic lance did a lot more damage in the game that I would have expected
against vehicles, so I can only imagine the carnage it would cause when
deployed against infantry. I really want to try it out.

The second game ended
in a Win to the Orks, I think the score was 5 – 3 so it was a lot closer and in
fact I might have been able to get 5 – 4 if the mek hadn’t repaired the stompa
so many times! I defiantly believe if you are going to use a Lord of War you
should probably use an escalation mission to reduce its power on the table and
have a more enjoyable game. But that’s how I feel now, let’s see what I say
after a few more games with the Lynx.

4 comments:

It does kinda confirm my suspicion about D-Weapons, sadly. I am however pleased to see the sonic lance having a good day and can't wait to look at a few of the Escalation missions to see how they balance the game out. I'm hoping that the 7th Edition rumors are true and that GW is using Escalation to play test Lords of War for the next edition as a standard feature.

Its the fact they explode regular tanks. If it was something like lose d3+1 hull points and if you get wrecked you explode that gives tanks a chance of surviving. How is a land raider just as survivable as a rhino?